This Day in History: 26 July 2020
26 July 1948
72 years ago, today, President Harry S. Truman signed the Executive Order 9981, ending discrimination in the military. This order ended a long-standing practise of segregating black soldiers and giving them more menial jobs. Since the Revolutionary War, African Americans had served in the United States military, but were deployed in their largest numbers during the Second World War. By the end of 1945, more than 2.5 million African Americans had registered for the military draft, and when the war ended, about 900,000 African Americans had served in the Army, Army Air Forces, Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and Army Nurse Corps.
Black World War Two veterans were eligible for a free college education under the Servicemen Readjustment Act of 1944, but most faced discrimination when trying to access their benefits. This led many veterans to re-examine their poor treatment while serving. After witnessing racism in the service, Grant Reynolds resigned from his commission as a World War Two chaplain and joined the activist A. Philip Randolph to co-chair the Committee Against Jim Crow in the Military Service and Training. The pressure from groups like theirs pushed President Truman to establish a Commission on Civil Rights, whose pleas were initially rejected by Congress. Truman pushed for many of the proposals from the Commission on his own, like the Executive Order 9981.
Want to find out more about the Executive Order 9981? Click here for more information, or here for more about racial discrimination in the military.
No comments:
Post a Comment